BeoSound 5 Forum

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

Electrified — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:43:27 GMT

mbee:

@Electrified : that's one of the reasons why there is no blu ray on Mac (but the main one is called Steve Jobs) : as OSX is based on an open-source UNIX kernel, BD protections were avoiding it... (but BD is already cracked)

I call Bollocks!

If it's not possible to have copy protection on Macs because OSX is based on UNIX, then no DRM is possible for that very reason. In fact, they have pretty much tied people into macs and especially iTunes if you wan't to use an iPad, iPhone, or iPod. Yet, it is all based on an open source UNIX kernel.

No, I think the sole one to blame for lack of BD support is Steve Jobs and the people buying Macs on sheer looks.

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

mbee — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 10:15:08 GMT

@Electrified : that's one of the reasons why there is no blu ray on Mac (but the main one is called Steve Jobs) : as OSX is based on an open-source UNIX kernel, BD protections were avoiding it... (but BD is already cracked)

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

Electrified — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 09:45:34 GMT

mbee:
By nature, Spotify can not be as open as your description... Why? Just because if it was open, it would take only 1 minute to write a bit of code allowing to download a song via Spotify.

That can't be right. Your argument seems to suggest that open source can't be safe or have protected contents.

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

mbee — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 09:25:57 GMT

By nature, Spotify can not be as open as your description... Why? Just because if it was open, it would take only 1 minute to write a bit of code allowing to download a song via Spotify. That would mean the end of Spotify, as no music company would dare to make its library available through Spotify.

But remember the very first rumors about the BS5 : people were saying that it would be able to play music that you like and you don't have... It was finally a way to say that MOTS can find some music that you totallly forgot on your vast library... But now, it can be done with Spotify.

Imagine listening to one of your tracks, then using MOTS, and MOTS would find tracks in your library AND on Spotify Premium... What a wonderful world would that be!

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

tournedos — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 06:12:18 GMT

"Open" means that anyone can build a client with available published specifications and source code. That is not the case with Spotify.

The Squeezebox plugin uses the API and closed source library I mentioned above. The API hasn't evolved much so I suspect the Spotify folks aren't too keen on revealing more info than that. Furthermore, it requires a premium account (apparently at least partly because they can't force showing ads with it) and has pretty ugly terms of usage - probably enforced by the content owners as well.

Sonos apparently has collaborated with Spotify for the implementation, so that can be done. But I believe it would not be in B&O's interests to turn the BS5 into a glorified Spotify (or whatever streaming service) client, which is pretty much the opposite of what it was designed to do: browse your own library. Also I'm sure the vastly underperforming B&O software department has its hands full with the current projects.

And to top it off, Spotify isn't even available in large parts of B&O's market area.

I agree it would be a nice thing to have, but the realities seem a bit too much for it to happen.

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

DoubleU — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 04:10:56 GMT

Spotify is great and far from being closed. It also works with Squeezebox, although it's unofficial.

But to be honest, I don't think B&O is ever going to support online streaming services. Not in the near future.

If only the Beo5/6 could do something like this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfqehOE5Je4

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

mbee — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 15:58:00 GMT

tournedos:
Spotify is almost completely closed, and the only ones able to build such an app for the BS5 would be Spotify themselves. I doubt they would have any interest given the market base - and on the other hand, they couldn't make it integrate with the user interface without B&O opening up the internals for them, another unlikely event.

Are you sure about that? Sonos also doesn't has a huge customer base, but they have now integrated Spotify, which IMHO turns Sonos as the best multiroom digital music system today.

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

tournedos — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 15:52:23 GMT

Spotify is almost completely closed, and the only ones able to build such an app for the BS5 would be Spotify themselves. I doubt they would have any interest given the market base - and on the other hand, they couldn't make it integrate with the user interface without B&O opening up the internals for them, another unlikely event.

After much anticipation, Spotify released an application programming interface last year, but it is limited enough to be practically useless for anything (and only runs on Linux anyway), so there's no real chance of any 3rd party doing it either.

I guess you could run the regular Spotify client on the BM5, but controlling it would be a tricky problem and I don't know if it would have access to the audio hardware anyway.

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

IngvarW — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 15:36:08 GMT

What do you think if the BS5 could run a spotify client. The wheel and the GO button could be used as a keyboard when you put in letters for searching artists. Brgds ingvar

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

beolion — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 01:48:42 GMT

I have asked my dealer to put a request at B&O to be able to search for Album Artist also, and not just Song Artists. Many songs that I have are often with 2 or more artists, which makes the search quite difficult.

How does B&O get the request for BS5/BM5 changes? Is that via the Dealer?

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

Electrified — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:45:58 GMT

propaganda:

ability to reorder

A slight misread on my part had me thinking about recording. Is it possible to record a radio broadcast (say, p1/bbc1/npr) on that thing, or is that not possible, just like podcasts aren't possible to subscribe to?

Besides that, I completely agree with the restriction. I don't want to listen to myself, nor any radio documentaries/features or whatever if I'm in a music mood and vice versa.

I don't know if the BS5 is able to at present - it wasn't when I looked at it, but a way to enter radio station URLs by oneself is another must. Not that there aren't many, but I don't like the idea that if I discover a great little radio stream from some basement I have to email Struer. Perhaps in the Encore (crossing fingers).

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

propaganda — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 05:25:19 GMT

Allow some parameters to be set for MOTS e.g. restrict the number of tracks from a single album or artist, and ability to reorder/re-randomise the queue

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

propaganda — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 05:29:20 GMT

I would like the ability to easily remove tracks from the queue. MOTS is good but it is not perfect.

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

pgra — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 14:47:54 GMT

My addition to the wishlist:

BS5 to show the radio station's logo as it shows the CD-cover
when turning off with Beo5 the system slowly phases out (turns down the volumen slowley). The same sould happen when turning it off directly on the BS5

Re: BS5/BM5 wishlist

Electrified — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 22:27:36 GMT

Harry2008:

jk1002:

I mean can you imagine a BS5 add in a magazine, saying hey we added apple lossless and gapless playing to it.

JK

No, more a message like; "Hey you there, reading this magazine, we have a new 2-way remote and, be totally astounded, we offer iPad and iPhone support too"

Wouldn't that be like Mercedes advertising "Hey, we have a gas tank and a steering wheel. We will even give you the option to fit an ashtray and a stereo if you want to"?

Seriously, gapless playback and ALAC as well as FLAC should be available through a firmware update. It can't be that hard to add.

The two-way remote is also a must. Especially considering that the screen on the BS5 doesn't react to the input of the remote, and that it is in fact competing with systems such as Squeezebox, Sonos, and even a NAS with a smartphone or an iPod/iPhone as a remote, all having the option to browse from your chair.

The iPhone/ipod support, well, if it could be streamed to the BM5, it would be neatest. Plugging the iPod in as in a dock defeats the purpose of using the iPod as a master and it will become a harddisk only. Sort of, because the iPoods an iPhones can't act as harddisk or thumbdrives anymore.

I also think that it needs a headphone plug on the BS5 part.

But, to me, all the hardware changes in the world won't suffice to make me buy one, unless they start thinking integration and useability into the firmware and take some useability cues from the competition. The real competition, not the CD-player brigade. A basic capacity it doesn't even have the ability to mimick.

For starters, besides adding gapless and playback of ALAC and FLAC, they also need to support such "advanced tech" as "podcasts", seeing how there's no way they will incorporate FM and DAB (+).Alas, it seems like they're acting in a vacuum these days and think that it's perfectly fine to have to use several other products to accompany theirs to get a "full" experience, not realising that in such a context, their part of the "system" becomes superfluous.

I'm all for simplicity and I'm against feature creep, but if you limit a product so much that you'll end having more boxes and more systems to take care of and keep in sync, the seemingly simple solution suddenly becomes very complex or at least time and space consuming.